Katie Holmes Wants Child Support Immediately, Further Angers Scientologists

While Katie Holmes may have appeared a shrinking violet next to Tom Cruise during their five-year marriage, her divorce, child support and custody tactics are anything but timid.

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Filing for divorce in New York (a state more likely to grant sole custody), successfully thwarted Tom's efforts to file in California because a couple cannot file in multiple states. He's just going to have to wait if he's unhappy with the judge's ruling. That buys her time to make a strong case, net child support and completely cut her ties from both the Mission: Impossible actor and the Church of Scientology.

Katie will appear in family court on July 17, where she will ask for "temporary child support to cover living expenses and the added security she has hired since her split from Tom,” a source close to the situation tells RadarOnline.com.

Needles to say, Katie has the edge. Tom is shooting a movie and perhaps won't even be able to make the first court date, and Katie will be ready to testify against any motion his legal team makes to stand in her way.

"It can't be emphasized enough that she took these extraordinary measures to protect her daughter, Suri," the source continues.

Meanwhile, the Church of Scientology is already preparing its members for a full-on damage control campaign, seeing as the TomKat divorce will do the religion no favors in the media. One of the church's leaders, Daniele Lattanzi, wrote an explosive e-mail that the NY Daily News found and printed.

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“When people start to bring our religion into the middle and a bunch of uninformed people start to spread false datum, rumors and defame our religion it became a matter that does affect my Dynamics and I believe that affects yours as well,” Daniele wrote. “I am not somebody that I am going to simply stand and watch a bunch of uninformed people putting my religion under the carpet.”

Of course, it doesn't help the church that many former Scientologists are coming out of the woodwork and offering their support to Katie.

"My experience in growing up in Scientology is that it is both mentally and at times physically abusive," Jenna Miscavige Hill — niece of David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology (and Tom's best man at his wedding to Katie) — said in a statement. "As a mother myself, I offer my support to Katie and wish for her all the strength she will need to do what is best for her and her daughter."